First Amendment: Kudos to Parkland High students for knowing their rights

PAUL MUSCHICK / THE MORNING CALL

Parkland High School seniors know a lot about their First Amendment rights, according to a recent survey. They have work to do, though, to reconcile how some of their opinions about limits on hate speech and personal attacks fit in with those rights.

Parkland High School seniors know a lot about their First Amendment rights, according to a recent survey. They have work to do, though, to reconcile how some of their opinions about limits on hate speech and personal attacks fit in with those rights. (PAUL MUSCHICK / THE MORNING CALL)

After 17 students and staff were gunned down at a Florida high school last winter, teenagers flooded the state Capitol there to demand tougher gun laws. Their peers around the country, including in the Lehigh Valley, protested in solidarity.

That was made possible by the First Amendment.

The ability to speak our mind, to gather, to demand change, to worship and to publish without government interference is a large part of what makes our country strong. Times have changed greatly since those rights were written into the Constitution more than two centuries ago. So it’s always worth looking at how they currently apply and the changing pressures on them, especially through the eyes of the next generation.

The senior class at Parkland High School in South Whitehall was a collective guinea pig of sorts. Students answered a survey that was compared to a national survey of adults about knowledge and application of the First Amendment. The results, revealed Wednesday during a forum that will be broadcast on PBS39 on Oct. 24, were interesting and should give students plenty to think about.

It should make you think, too.

The takeaway was that the students know a lot about First Amendment rights — more than the population at large — but in some instances support actions that would infringe on those rights, even though they overwhelmingly say they support those rights.

That’s not necessarily surprising, or a problem. It’s not isolated, either, as a lot of the adults who were surveyed support restricting some speech, too.

The students’ opinions have been shaped by the events they’ve grown up with — including school shootings and threats, the #MeToo movement and bullying and other ugliness on social media. Parkland students in South Whitehall exercised their right to assemble in March after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Teenagers have become accustomed to seeing how nastiness can spread worldwide with just a few words typed into a smartphone, so I’m not surprised that 70 percent of the Parkland seniors who were surveyed said social media companies should remove hate speech and 76 percent said social media companies should remove personal attacks.

Fifty-four percent also strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that government should require social media sites to “monitor and remove objectionable content.”

Those opinions reflect their beliefs that there’s no place in the world for hate. That’s commendable. But the First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing laws “abridging the freedom of speech.”

The senior class, roughly 800 students, attended Wednesday’s forum at the high school and saw how their knowledge and opinions stacked up against national knowledge and opinions. They should be proud that they knew so much.

Only about one-third of people in a recent poll were able to name all three branches. About the same percentage couldn’t name any of the branches.

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They consistently outperformed adults, by wide margins, on their ability to name the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. They showed a deeper belief in those rights, with only 10 percent saying they believed the “First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.” In the national poll of adults, 23 percent said so.

The students asked good questions about how the First Amendment fits in with recent happenings — such as protests by NFL players during the national anthem and the creation of “safe spaces” at public universities where participants are asked to avoid speaking certain terms or about certain topics that can be considered offensive.

Students wanted to know how the First Amendment applies at school, where teachers and administrators must balance First Amendment rights with the need to maintain order and a safe environment.

It’s awesome that Parkland administrators, faculty and staff participated in this survey and forum. They wouldn’t have had the opportunity if it wasn’t for the hard work of a lot of others, including Muhlenberg College, which surveyed the Parkland seniors, and the Freedom Forum Institute in Washington, D.C., which surveyed the adults.

Other participants included the Pennsylvania Bar Association, Pennsylvania NewMedia Association Foundation and the Nauman Smith law firm, which handles a lot of First Amendment cases.

We all should heed the advice given to the students Wednesday that it’s important to understand your First Amendment rights — all of them, not just freedom of speech — and fight to keep them, even if you may disagree with some of the results of those rights, such as the existence of hate speech.

“The battle to gain a freedom is difficult,” said Gene Policinski, president and COO of the Freedom Forum Institute. “But even harder is to bring back a right or a freedom that you’ve given away.”